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HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 



BY 
LUCY M SALMON 



POUGHKEEPSIE. NEW YORK 
1915 



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First impression, 1912 
Second impression, 1915 






HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

Hope for a summer in Europe vanished into 
the dim background of '^next year" while dis- 
couragement occupied the foreground. Where 
forsooth could one get new ideas except in Europe, 
where find a library outside of London or Paris. 
where study historical records but in foreign 
archives, where see the results of archselogical 
discoveries outside of European museums, where 
harvest stores of historical knowledge except in 
foreign fields? Winter quarters for nine months 
at home were endurable for the sake of three 
months of activity in other lands, but hibernation 
prolonged to twenty-one months, — that was un- 
thinkable. The calendar has indeed always 
seemed hopelessly wrong, — ^were not the three 
months in Europe a full year of mental life, and 
did not the nine months of constant draft on men- 
tal resources at home shrink to a paltry week of 
growth"? Did not three months of acquisition in 
Europe leave one rich, while nine months of con- 
stant depletion of mental capital at home left one 
bankrupt? If "fifty years of Europe were better 
than a cycle of Cathay," did it not follow that 
one-fourth of a year in Europe was better than 
three-fourths of a year anywhere else? It was 
all a tangle that might possibly have been straight- 
ened out after a summer abroad, but in June it 
was a hopeless snarl. 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

But the chance question of a friend put Alad- 
din's lamp in our hands and opened up before our 
eyes as large an undiscovered world as could be 
found in seven kingdoms. She had asked how she 
could study history in a back yard, and, lo, the 
whole past opened up at our door! Why search 
for hid treasure abroad when the history of the 
world was spread out in the back yard? Perish 
the thought that we had ever sought knowledge 
elsewhere, — we would study historical records in 
a garden seat, and search for archselogical re- 
mains in the summer house. If Mahomet could 
not go to the mountain, the mountain could sum- 
mer in the back yard. The world was still ours 
to explore! 

Our back yard is a parallelogram about thirty 
feet wide and four times as long. On one of the 
long sides a board fence separates it from the ad- 
joining property and in that direction a series of 
fences marks the divisions of private property. 
On the other side of our yard, our kindly land- 
lord and a genial neighbor agreed to take down 
the division fence between the two places, other 
neighbors on that side have followed their exam- 
ple, and thus a green park extends in the rear of 
the block half way to the corner. At the lower end 
of the yard, a very high board fence separates 
our yard from the one that joins it back-to-back 
and conceals from our view the vegetable garden 
of the neighbor in our rear. 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

Now it seems a very simple, commonplace 
thing to have a fence, or not to have a fence, and 
the question is apparently one to be decided by 
the common consent of the two adjacent property 
holders. If a fence is built, it means presumably 
that the property owners place a high value on 
privacy and seclusion, that they do not care for 
the unsought visits of children, that they do not 
wish to expose their flowers, their fruit, and their 
vegetables to the ravages of those too lazy to 
plant their own gardens, but not too lazy to profit 
by the industry of others, that they seek pro- 
tection from the dogs, pigs, goats, and cows that 
in some localities still have the freedom of the 
town and in a not remote past had it in all. If 
the fence is surmounted by a row of spikes, it in- 
dicates not simply an aversion to certain unde- 
sirable conditions, but a positive fear of disagree- 
able visitors and of dangerous intruders, coupled 
with serious doubts about the enforcement of the 
law on the part of those charged with that duty. 
If a high hedge is selected to mark the bound- 
ary lines, it suggests not only a love of retire- 
ment and contemplation, but a desire for protec- 
tion from dust while currents of air are not en- 
tirely shut off. The hedge also becomes a screen 
that separates the prosaic vegetable garden from 
the lawn or the flower beds. If, however, the 
hedge is placed behind a high stone wall, then in- 
deed are all passers-by impressed with the love 
of solitude that characterizes the occupants of 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

the place. The invitation ''to loaf and invite the 
sonl" becomes esoteric not exoteric, and whoever 
braves the forbidding wall and hedge and enters 
within, feels himself a candidate for the medal 
awarded the doer of "the bravest deed ever 
done." 

If, on the other hand, no fence is built, or one 
already bnilt is taken down, it may indicate a dis- 
regard of privacy and a desire to live more or less 
in the public eye, it may be an index of aesthetic 
ideals, or it may imply a growing desire to sub- 
ordinate personal advantage to public good, or 
an appreciation of how much is gained by neigh- 
bors who have interests in common rather than 
mutually repellant characteristics. The absence 
of a fence shows that laws are both made and en- 
forced restraining cattle from running at large, — 
what community of interest once demanded, com- 
munity of interest now forbids. 

It is thus apparently a matter of option be- 
tween neighbors whether or not property rights 
are indicated by an outward, visible symbol, and 
it seems equally a matter of option whether that 
symbol of private ownership shall take the form 
of a fence, a hedge, or a wall, or any combination 
of these three forms of enclosure. Moreover, it 
seems again a matter of option what variety of 
material is to be used in constructing the division- 
marker. The wall may be of brick because brick 
is cheap, or because it harmonizes with the archi- 
tecture of the house and with its other settings; 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

it may be of stone because the land needed clear- 
ing, or because the owner was able to gratify his 
taste and import stone from a distance. The 
material of which the dividing wall is built may 
indicate either one of the two extremes of neces- 
sity or of luxury, of resourcefulness of ideas or 
of abundance of means. 

The fence in its turn may be a record of pioneer 
days when the first settlers cleared the forests 
and the stump fence became a by-product; the 
zig-zag rail fence is a later development of pioneer 
life, while the plain board fence and the picket 
fence were the plebeian and the patrician divisions 
between village lots. The lattice fence meant 
honeysuckle vines, while the iron fence meant the 
portly, prosperous merchant who was always up- 
to-date. The introduction of the barbed wire 
fence indicated the ravages that had been made 
on the timber supply of the country, while legis- 
lation against the use of barbed wire and the sub- 
stitution for it of woven wire and other forms of 
wire fencing is a record of growing humanitarian- 
ism and the care that the state is coming to take 
for the protection of both animals and men. The 
still further depletion of the timber supply is 
recorded in the displacement of the wooden fence 
post by the concrete post, and thus the gamut is 
complete from a fence entirely of timber in some 
stage of development to a fence constructed with- 
out any timber whatsoever. 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

The character of the hedge as marking the di- 
vision line is determined by its secondary object. 
Is this secondary object protection against the 
free passage of animals, the osage orange is 
called into requisition ; is the land low and marshy 
and does it demand support, the willow hedge is 
set out ; if wind and dust are special enemies, the 
hedge of evergreens results ; if privacy is sought, 
the privet, the box, and the arbor vitse are in 
demand; if varied beauty is the ideal, the bar- 
berry is planted. The hedge, to a greater extent 
than the wall and the fence, not only serves as 
a line of demarcation, but it also renders a second- 
ary service of beauty scarcely less important 
than its primary one of indicating boundary 
lines. 

But, after all, wall and fence and hedge are but 
outward symbols of a crude method of marking 
private ownership. ''The things that are seen 
are temporal, but the things that are unseen are 
eternal." The real boundary lines have been 
long ago established by the theodolite of the sur- 
veyor and they have been recorded in the office 
of the county clerk in the county court house. 
Walls, fences, and hedges of every form and 
variety known to man may be set up, and taken 
down, but the surveyor's instruments and the re- 
corded deeds are a court from whose decisions 
no appeal can be taken. 

The unpretentious plain board fence that sepa- 
rates us from one of our neighbors has intro- 

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HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 



duced us to the whole question of methods of 
marking boundary lines, to the complicated sub- 
ject of surveying that has in the beginning deter- 
mined where these boundary lines are to run, 
and to an elaborate legal system that has been 
developed for the purpose of establishing and 
maintaining the claims of rightful ownership. 

On the other side of our back yard, there is no 
indication of private ownership of property, — 
neither wall, nor fence, nor hedge separates us 
from our neighbor's apple-trees and rhubarb, we 
share his garden seats and his lawn swing, and we 
in turn offer him the hospitality of our berry 
bushes, our grape vines, and our summer house. 
We know indeed that the boundary line has been 
measured to the fraction of an inch and that its 
location has been duly described in the deeds of 
ownership of the two adjacent properties, and 
that these deeds are presumably deposited in two 
respective safe deposit boxes in one of the city 
banks. But as long as no fence obtrudes itself 
with its insistence on private ownership, we shall 
enjoy the fiction of joint ownership with our 
neighbor of all the treasures of two back yards. 
The fence means isolation, separation, and lack 
of common interest; the absence of the fence 
means community life, mutual aid, toleration, and 
joint pleasures and opportunities. 

Who made the first fence and who gave him the 
right to make that fence ? "Ah there 's the rub ! " 
If the fence on one side of our back yard has in- 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

troduced us to the realms of higher mathematics 
by way of the surveyor's line and compass, and 
to the Torrens system of recording deeds by way 
of the courthouse on the corner, and to the ques- 
tion of public guardianship of personal property 
by way of the safe deposit box in the bank, the 
absence of a fence on the other side has brought 
us face to face with a question that antedates all 
the written records of history. Did private owner- 
ship of land precede communal ownership, or 
was land held in common and did enclosure fol- 
low! Over this question battles on paper have 
been lost and won, reputations made and shatter- 
ed, and the final word in regard to it said with 
each and every recurring discussion of the sub- 
ject. With a fence on two sides and no fence on 
the other two sides, our back yard maintains a 
discreet impartiality and refuses to commit itself 
on the merits of the controversy. 

Our back yard has nothing that even by cour- 
tesy could be called a garden, — a few spring bulbs 
blossom in the lawn, a row of rosebushes remind 
us when June comes, bunches of old-fashioned 
artemisias announce the arrival of autumn, a 
trumpet vine all but conceals a rustic summer 
house, honeysuckles cover the lower branches of 
a mulberry tree, berry bushes and morning glories 
conceal in summer the long dividing fence, a high 
trellis for grape vines is at the lower end of the 
yard, immediately in front of the high division 
fence covered with woodbine. A long narrow 

10 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

strip of lawn connects the back yard proper with 
a passage-way that leads to a bit of lawn in front 
of the house where a rose of Sharon and an hy- 
drangea are found and a wistaria that climbs 
over the front porch. A few spring flowering 
shrubs are planted along this very narrow strip 
of grass that connects the back yard with the pas- 
sage-way, and a few annuals blossom for us 
Wherever it is convenient to drop the seed in the 
spring. An occasional weed persistently comes up 
every year, apparently rather not to be forgotten 
than to be obnoxiously obtrusive. 

It all seems very simple and commonplace and 
there is nothing that at first indicates its cosmo- 
politan character. But a study of genealogy re- 
veals many surprising and interesting family re- 
lationships. The crocus comes from the Levant, 
the hyacinth and the narcissus bear Greek names, 
the daffodil is a native of England, the tulip in 
its name is allied with Turkey and in its history 
with Holland, the fleur-de-lis is the insignia of 
France and also of Florence, our lilac is Persian, 
the wistaria is Japanese, the asters Chinese, the 
rose of Sharon suggests Palestine, the ubiquitous 
thistle is Scotch, while cosmos in its name con- 
nects us with the order and harmony of the whole 
created universe. Could the nations of the world 
live together as peacefully as do their represen- 
tatives in our back yard, international peace 
would be already an accomplished fact. 

11 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

But our flowers and shrubs and vines bring us 
into contact not only with the nations of the world 
in this very concrete form, but they introduce us 
to the world-old union and conflict of realism and 
idealism, the literal and the imaginative. Realism 
confronts us in the names of the morning glory, 
the trumpet vine, the honeysuckle, and the tulip, 
while imagination and idealism give us the helio- 
trope, the hydrangea, the narcissus, and the hya- 
cinth. Yet it is the realism of the Greek that 
crops out in the names of the heliotrope and the 
hydrangea while it undergoes a sea-change in be- 
coming for us words of the imagination and ideal- 
ism. Is it possible that the realism of one be- 
comes the idealism of another? What if all our 
realism has its imaginative side and what if our 
idealism has its roots in realism? 

We have never quite understood why there 
should be a mulberry tree in our back yard, but 
there it is and it makes a pleasant connection for 
us with that doughty Dutch patroon, Kiliaen Van 
Rensselaer. He never saw the vast estates on 
the Hudson to which his name was given, but he 
managed the territory and the colony in his Am- 
sterdam office at a distance of more than three 
thousand miles in space and four months' distance 
in time. Among other minute instructions sent 
out to his agent is one to the effect that he should 
be on the look-out for silkworms since they are 
likely to be found where there are mulberry trees. 
Whether the agent found the silkworms or not, 

12 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

the papers of Kiliaen Van Rensselaer do not state, 
but we infer that he may not have done so since 
we have been on the look-out for silkworms for 
some years, and while in our search we have en- 
countered fireflies, mosquitoes, June bugs, and 
bats, no silkworms have been discovered. 

Our back yard does not in truth have a Lom- 
bardy poplar, but it so naturally belongs there 
that we often look at a certain spot and lo, the 
tree is there. The Lombardy poplar was the em- 
blem of democracy in the struggle between Lom- 
bardy and Austria and the very derivation of its 
name from populus gives it a democratic lineage. 
If princes and potentates take the rose and the lily 
as emblems of their authority, why should not 
humble social democrats take the Lombardy pop- 
lar with its double democratic lineage as the badge 
of their individual beliefs ? And if the tree is not 
in reality in our back yard, but is there in spirit, 
is it not in the end the same? 

Nor does our back yard number among its 
assets a Norway maple. Yet we have claimed 
kinship also with this. If at times we are all 
cowards, are there not other times when the blood 
of the vikings flows in our veins? If at times 
inertia keeps us in our accustomed places, are 
there not many more times when the zest for ex- 
ploring the undiscovered realms of knowledge 
takes us into far countries? Our Norway maple 
links us with the venturesome voyagers of old who 
were ever seeking new paths across the track- 

13 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

less seas and it thus opens up to us the whole 
world of knowledge for discovery and explora- 
tion. The cherry-tree outside of our back window 
is not ours, — the robins take the fruit, other birds 
build their nests in its branches, winter claims 
its foliage, and we have no special feeling of 
affection for it ; it is a plain, prosaic cherry-tree, 
doubtless with admirable qualities, but it is a 
stranger to us. But our blood tingles with the 
glimpse of our democratic Lombardy poplar and 
our venturesome Norway maple. These bloom for 
us in perennial youth. 

The grapevines at the lower end of the yard 
are not in themselves real additions to the place, — 
the grapes rarely ripen, and when they do ripen 
they are small and tasteless. It is not for the sake 
of what they are, but for the sake of what they 
suggest, that every year we mend the trellis and 
trim the vines, — for the grapevines connect us 
with the great revolutionary movement in west- 
ern Europe and put us in touch with the company 
of young men who came to this country to seek 
the political liberty they had missed in their 
native land. Among the number was a young 
German who settled in northern Iowa, edited a 
newspaper for a livelihood, and cultivated grapes 
for recreation. Coming from the valley of the 
Ehine where the vines were grown on poles 
rather than on trellises, he became an ardent ad- 
vocate of the advantages of the single-pole method 
of grapevine culture, and the merits of his grapes 

14 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

attested individually the virtues of his theory. 
But his theory of grape cultivation and the zest 
with which he advocated it were after all but an 
outlet for a genuine love of political liberty and 
social individualism, — traits that characterized 
his family, another branch of which had given to 
the cause of liberty the Tyrolese patriot, Andreas 
Hofer. If we tend our grapevines and do not re- 
sent their thankless return for the care lavished 
on them, it is because we see behind them the Ger- 
man Revolution of 1848-1849 and back of that the 
Tyrolese uprising of 1809, and because our sym- 
pathies and interests are with the side that met 
temporary defeat in the struggle for political 
equality. 

The English ivy does not thrive in our climate, 
but it sometimes maintains a precarious existence 
where it does not grow luxuriantly, and our back 
yard counts as its greatest treasure a modest 
vine grown from a slip taken from the home of 
Maria Mitchell at Nantucket. When discourage- 
ment comes and nothing seems quite worth while, 
the ivy becomes a veritable tent of Pari-Banou and 
quickly we are at her island home, we discover 
with her the famous comet that bears her name, 
we share her interests and her work, we sit in her 
observatory and listen to ''the music of the 
spheres, ' ' and behold, all things are made new. 

Our back yard has little in the way of furniture, 
but that little is an interesting record of the 
changes that have come even in our own day in 

15 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

the direction of greater naturalness and a more 
normal, healthy, wholesome life. The old love 
of fashionable adornment that found expression 
in iron dogs, stone deer, and garden statuary, 
and the love of ostentatious display that found an 
outlet in the importation of Italian seats, French 
fountains and Spanish vases have given place to 
a genuine interest in out-of-door life, healthful 
exercise, and rational recreation. The old play 
house where the children quietly amused them- 
selves with toys and dolls has given place to the 
sand box, the tent, the cart, and the wheel, and the 
diminutive automobile. Tennis and croquet are 
possible even in a restricted space, and the bicycle 
is again coming into its own. The hammock, the 
garden bench, the seat with protecting awning, 
and the summer house all show the growing love 
of fresh air, and the appreciation of the back 
yard as a place for rest and refreshment. The 
change has extended even to animal life, — the 
artificial bird house has disappeared and the birds 
seek their own location, while the dog kennel has 
vanished with the banishment of the large dog 
to the country. 

Industrial changes are recorded in our back 
yard. Once the weekly laundry was displayed on 
lines strung between posts, then came the clothes 
reel, and now both have disappeared since the 
laundry is done out of the house. But our back 
yard joins back-to-back the yards of the two- 
family houses on the next street, and now we see, 

16 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

is it every day in the week? the line and pulley 
that show that the domestic ''wash" is done in the 
limited space afforded by flat and tenement and 
apartment. Is there some mal-adjustment some- 
where that demands that laundry work must be 
done in a space inadequate for it, while it is sent 
out of a house that has abundance of room for 
doing it? "Will sometime the record show that 
laundry work is everywhere taken out of the indi- 
vidual flat, tenement, apartment, house, mansion, 
palace, and done under perfect sanitary and eco- 
nomic conditions? 

Electric wires running in our back window show 
the cooling of the kitchen by an electric fan and 
suggest the future possibilities of the substitution 
of electricity for gas in lighting and in summer 
cooking. 

The growing interest in sanitation has also left 
its record in our back yard. A disused cistern 
means an improved municipal water supply and 
the galvanized iron can with tight fitting cover 
indicates that garbage is collected by the city, 
though the pile of ashes in the back yard of one 
neighbor and the mound of rubbish in that of 
another suggest fields for municipal activity as 
yet but partially entered. The rain-water barrel 
in the back yard of a friend, with its coat of kero- 
sene, suggests new ideas of sanitation and the 
mosquito. 

Our back yard has a modest outlook over the 
back yards of our neighbors and in one we see 

17 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

the unused conservatory of a fine old place, — un- 
used, not because the flowers are loved less than 
formerly, but rather perhaps because they are 
more universally loved. The greenhouses of the 
florist have superseded the conservatory of the 
private owner, outside of large country estates, 
and former luxuries have become democratic 
necessities. The back yard of another neighbor 
has a bed of herbs, apparently containing every 
variety known to the botanist, — a luxury to-day, 
but an interesting record of past time when every 
housewife of necessity grew her own herbs for 
savory flavorings and for the family medicine 
closet. The spring flowers and early vegetables 
of another back yard suggest the annual flitting of 
our neighbor and the summer flowers and late 
vegetables that await them at their country home. 
The orderly tool house of still another neighbor, 
with its lawn mower and roller, its variety of gar- 
den tools, and its hose reel all indicate the grow- 
ing attention paid to the care of lawns, gardens, 
and yards, though the opposite tendency is indi- 
cated in the case of a neighbor who thinks that his 
proximity to a park frees him from the necessity 
of troubling about a back yard at all. 

Our back yard has never had a barn or a stable, 
but as we look up and down the yards on the block 
we see recorded the passing of the stable and the 
coming of the garage, and not only the simple 
garage for the automobile, but the more elaborate 
one with ' ' two rooms and a bath" for the chauffeur 

18 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

records the ever-ascending standard of living for 
employees as well as for employer. Not far away 
a single old-fashioned barn remains with its 
record of a cow as well as of a horse once kept, 
and with its chicken coop attached. If the family 
horse and carriage has become an automobile, if 
the family cow has been removed to the dairy 
farm, and the family chickens now lay their eggs 
on a poultry farm, will not the family washtub in 
time develop into the country laundry 1 

So our back yard has the records of all the 
ages within its narrow enclosure. Prehistoric 
questions of the ownership of land lie in our 
fences, classical mythology blossoms in our bulbs^ 
the discovery of a new world rises in our Norway 
maple, affection for mother country blooms in 
daffodil and thistle, the Dutch West India Com- 
pany lives in our mulberry tree, new trade routes 
are opened up in our lilies, commercial treaties 
are signed in our shrubs, Italian independence 
shimmers in our Lombardy poplar, political lib- 
erty and the downfall of tyrants climb over our 
grape trellis, and international peace is pro- 
claimed in all that grows within our domain. 

Sanitation is recorded in our garbage can, 
municipal improvement in our disused cistern, 
higher standards of living in the garage, educa- 
tion in the sand box, wholesome recreation in the 
tennis court, love of fresh air in the garden seat, 
summer migration in the abandoned garden, 
housing problems in laundry line and pulley, and 

19 



HISTORY IN A BACK YARD 

progress in invention in electric wires. Genealogy 
is concealed in our flowers and biography in our 
vines; democracy lives in our trees and patriot- 
ism thrives in our weeds; economic theory lifts 
up its head in the single tax on land and economic 
research delves into enclosures, while over all 
broods the spirit of historical investigation. 

What are the treasures of Europe in compari- 
son with the wealth of the whole world that is 
ours by the right of eminent domain when claimed 
from the back steps! 

The advantages of studying history in a back 
yard are manifold. Neither hot sun, nor pouring 
rain, nor driving winds interfere with the pursuit 
of knowledge on a back porch. No impertinent 
guides must be placated with fees, no taxicabs de- 
plete our pocketbooks, no Baedeker proclaims us 
tourists, no foreigners practice their English on 
us, no one jeers at our efforts to speak an un- 
known tongue, no one gives us the wrong change 
or obsolete coins, rooms and meals are "just as 
good as they are at home." If work presses, or 
the bank fails, or a sprained ankle comes, or un- 
expected demands on time arise, — seek the rec- 
ords of history in the back yard. 



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